


The City's Summer Smells Like Perfume

by cashewdani



Category: How I Met Your Mother, The Office (US)
Genre: Crossover, F/M, Long-Distance Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-09-20
Updated: 2008-09-20
Packaged: 2018-01-15 02:44:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1288297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cashewdani/pseuds/cashewdani
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Gathered into the conference room with everyone wearing foam Statue of Liberty crowns and a cake reading “I Heart NY” in red and black icing (</i>“Like the T-shirts, Pam!”<i> Michael had exclaimed), she almost feels like she’s going to miss this place.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	The City's Summer Smells Like Perfume

When they get home, Pam quietly says she’s going to go lay down. That she’s tired. Jim watches her slip off her shoes, softly close the bedroom door.

He turns on the end of _The Colbert Report_ and pours some iced tea he doesn’t drink. After watching the same _South Park_ commercial three times, he can’t take pretending like something isn’t wrong and knocks.

She’s in bed with her back to him, wearing one of his ancient, red sweatshirts from high school. Jim runs his hand over her shoulder and listens to her sigh. She smells kind of like her, and kind of like him, and it unconsciously makes him pull her closer.

“I’m really angry Andy did that tonight,” Pam whispers and Jim kisses the back of her ear. He feels an impulse, like maybe now is the moment, the one that’s been right all along. Something simple but meaningful. But, as he’s shifting, trying to reach the weight in his pocket that he realized earlier that afternoon he’s probably going to miss, she turns to look at him. “Just...” and he can see the tears on her cheeks.

“Yeah,” he says, and pushes some hair off her face. “Okay.” He doesn’t know what he’s agreeing to, but it feels right, to say yes to her.

\---

The next morning, while he’s eating _Frosted Flakes_ she asks, “Can we take the engagement idea off the table?” and his facial response must be shocked enough that she puts her hand on top of his, grounding him to the moment. “Not forever, but, I can’t…I can’t take knowing it could happen at any second.” Slowly moving her thumb, she wants to know, “Is that okay?”

Jim feels torn because of course it’s okay that she’s not ready. That it’s making her a little anxious. He’s been anxious for months, the velvet box always at the back of his mind. Thinking that maybe if he doesn’t act quickly, he’s going to wake up alone one morning and every morning after that for the rest of his life, and he can’t even acknowledge a life without her in it anymore. 

But looking at her, while she’s biting her lower lip, and really trying to make sure that he’s not offended, he has to tell her it’s fine. And he does, because she’s Pam, and he adores her.

“I love you. You know that right?” Pam says, her grip tightening just a little around his fingers.

“Of course I know that.” and his voice is quiet.

She kisses him, and there are a lot of words conveyed in the action. Words like she’ll agree when the time is right, and that she appreciates how he listens and all that love she was talking about.

He takes her to bed, the cereal forgotten, and makes her yell out _Yes…yes_ in breathy exultations and imagines them being in a completely different context.

\---

Michael forces the Party Planning Committee to put something together, as though Pam is going away forever and not just six weeks. Gathered into the conference room with everyone wearing foam Statue of Liberty crowns and a cake reading “I Heart NY” in red and black icing ( _“Like the T-shirts, Pam!”_ Michael had exclaimed), she almost feels like she’s going to miss this place.

That is until Angela tells her she should be careful in the city by herself, the way she dresses.

Watching Kevin and Andy try to play ring toss with a model of the Empire State Building, she feels Jim’s hand slip into hers.

“So, are you in a New York state of mind?”

“You know, despite all this, I think I actually am.”

They listen to the piped in music, all of it thematically appropriate. Frank Sinatra and Liza Minnelli singing the same lyrics. Billy Joel. Simon & Garfunkel.

When she asks to stop at _Sheetz_ on their way home for her last real taste of authentic Pennsylvanian cuisine, he doesn’t even rag on her about it.

\---

Pam tears up her first night in the new apartment. She honestly doesn’t want to, because this is exciting, and an amazing opportunity, and something she’s thought about doing for years. But, she can’t help thinking about Jim helping her carry her desk up the stairs, and how right now he’s driving back alone to Scranton in that sweaty, gray t-shirt, and she’d be lying if she said she wasn’t a little terrified.

She thought she’d be younger, when the time came for this. That she wouldn’t be pushing thirty and living with some random people she found on Craigslist. The fact that Craigslist wasn’t even around when she was twenty two is not entirely lost on her either. But, her roommates seem nice, Naomi and Lisa, who are doing their grad programs at St. Joseph ’s. Pam can hear them in the next room watching _America’s Got Talent_ and mocking the hell out of it.

She unpacks her art supplies and one suitcase full of clothes before she feels ok again. In control of herself. And when Naomi pokes her head in and asks if Pam wants to join them on an ice cream run, she’s able to say yes and smile.

Eating their pints of Haggen-Daaz on the futon that is nicer than Michael’s, Pam wonders why she spent so much of her life being afraid. With letting being Roy’s girlfriend be enough for her. She wants to know how many nights there were like this that she never got to experience.

Pam calls Jim when she’s getting ready to go to bed, and asks him if he’s ever had a day that seemed like it was going to change the entire course of his life.

She isn’t surprised at all when all of his days seem to have something to do with her.

\---

When he gets off the phone, Jim knows it’s going to take him a while to do anything but concentrate on the fact that Pam’s miles away.

Even after the conversation with her a few weeks ago, he’s been carrying the ring around. Moving it from pocket to pocket every morning, like clockwork and habit. And while she was packing up her apartment, he debated slipping it inside one of her boxes, preferably one she wouldn’t open right away, despite the fact that it was a cop out and a complete breech of their agreement.

He has work in the morning, but keeps walking around, putting the ring in different places in the apartment. In his sock drawer. Under the pillow on her side of the bed. On top of the refrigerator. Eventually, he slips it into the pocket of a windbreaker near the back of his closet and is finally able to lie down and go to sleep.

\---

Pam manages to get her student ID, and find the locations for both her courses, Multimedia Design II and Painting in Watercolors, all without any major mishaps.

Whenever she thinks about the fact that she’s going to just get to make art all summer, without having to answer phones, or convince Michael that the radiation he’d receive from a sunburn isn’t enough to turn him into a superhero she gets almost shaky with pleasure.

She spends a long time trying to decide what to wear her first day of class, like this is kindergarten or something. Lisa and her end up enacting an informal fashion show that would have made Kelly proud. And then the day is here, and she has the butterflies in her stomach she hasn't gotten for years. There’s a post-it on the bathroom mirror when she goes to brush her teeth. “Good luck, and try to play nicely with the other art students” she reads aloud, taking in the little smiley face and Naomi and Lisa’s signatures at the bottom. Pam places the note on the inside cover of her sketchbook and feels extremely grateful.

She gets to her painting class ridiculously early, still a little nervous about how the subway works and whether she'll actually be able to find the building even though she's been there before. Pam wants to text Jim while she’s sitting on a planter outside, killing time, but, she feels kind of like that would be a crutch of some sort. She makes herself doodle outlandish flowers and intricate mazes of vines as a distraction until it’s finally late enough that she can safely go and find a seat.

While she is setting up her supplies, a woman with dark hair and blunt bangs takes the easel next to her. She leans over and introduces herself as Lily. 

\---

Before the professor had even started going over the syllabus, Lily had already asked Pam to come out with her for a drink after class.

Pam had planned on having just the one drink, somewhere close to campus, but Lily had insisted on this bar under her apartment. “McLaren’s is the only place to go. Unless there’s karaoke. Oooh, or drink specials,” Lily had explained in the cab on the way over. 

And so here Pam is, sitting in some bar, all the way out in Manhattan. She feels tipsy and cosmopolitan and when she says this out loud, Lily replies, “That probably has to do with the Cosmopolitans”.

Pam laughs probably a little too loudly in response and orders another.

\---

The last person that Pam can remember liking so much right off the bat was Theresa Carter, who she met in third grade and ate lunch with because they had the same _Full House_ Thermos. Lily is witty and talented and filled with stories about teaching and growing up in New York and the study abroad program she did in Paris for a semester, and Pam feels like she's been waiting her whole life to meet someone exactly like this.

She was worried it was just her, getting all caught up in the hustle and bustle of the big city, and clinging to the one person who'd let that happen, but Lily says it’s wonderful to have Pam around. Her husband is always busy going on job interviews, and her roommate just got engaged and Robin, who was supposed to spend the summer with her, is always uptown visiting their friend Barney at Mount Sinai. Without Pam, she'd be forced to talk to that guy in class who always smells like onion bagels or to go shopping with her mom.

The two of them make drinks after class a ritual. They go to the Met and the MOMA and sketch people sunbathing in Central Park. On the subway, Pam finds herself in animated conversations with Lily about colloquiums or art movements or the way that getting a new sketchbook still feels as good as it did the first time. All of it makes Pam feel like a cooler version of herself; the kind of woman she saw herself being when she’d spend Trigonometry daydreaming back in high school.

\---

Jim comes up on the weekends, and brings stories like Dwight and Andy got in some arm wrestling competition, that might have been a battle for Angela’s affections, or a way to determine who will be most eligible for Ryan’s old job. When Pam asks how on earth it could be the second alternative, Jim says, “Come on, Pam. Upper body strength. Totally important when it comes to working at corporate.” How could she forget?

Jim likes going to brunch with Lily and Marshall on Saturday mornings and taking Pam back to her place to have sex in bed all afternoon. His mouth always tastes like the stack of buttermilk pancakes he gets, familiar and syrupy and sweet.

She hates it when he leaves on Sundays until it’s Monday morning and she gets to hold a paintbrush and make things that are beautiful.

\---

Pam meets Barney for the first time the night of the Opening Ceremonies of the Olympics, even though she feels like she already knows him from all the stories she’s heard. Lily makes her promise at least four times not to make any bets with him about the outcome of any of the events. "Even if he begs, Pam. And he will."

As soon as they walk in the door, he's asking Lily if she wants to put any money on China sweeping the gymnastics medals, and saying that if they'd let him go to Beijing like his business associates had arranged, he'd have no problem getting anyone to take his odds on that.

"You're practically encased in plaster, Barney. You can't fly." Lily says. "This is my friend, Pam, that I told you about."

"Pam, you're prettier than Lily let on." Barney winks, and it makes her blush a little bit. "What do you say about $50 on one of the track events? I'll let you pick which one."

Lily adjusts some of the buttons on the bed while saying, "She's already been warned to ignore you."

"Lily, come on! It's just $50, Pam. I can even do $25, if that's the problem."

Pam looks at Lily who's mouthing _I told you so_ where Barney can't see her. She decides to change the subject. "Barney, what do you do that someone would offer to bring you to the Opening Ceremonies?"

He just scoffs. “Please.” Lily rolls her eyes.

They eventually wind up with six of them crammed in the hospital room, Ted and Stella and Lily and Marshall and Robin and Pam, all trying to find someplace comfortable to put themselves.

Barney complains in the beginning about how tiny the TV is, and how he would kill for some authentic Chinese food and wants to know why the athletes aren’t wearing suits to be as awesome as possible. But, as soon as Robin shifts, pulling herself up closer to him in an attempt to give Lily more room at the foot of the bed, he gets quiet and doesn’t say anything else for the rest of the broadcast.

Not even when Marshall and Ted start discussing how they can't wait to watch the fencing competition, miming a sword fight that looks more like a light saber battle than anything that could be an Olympic event, and Lily is yelling at them about how the last time they did this she ended up impaled.

In the elevator, Pam whispers to Lily, "You didn't tell me Barney and Robin were a thing."

"They're not even aware they are, but it's been going on for awhile now. Don't tell the boys. Ted will probably just freak out all over again and Marshall won't like that I didn't tell him first."

\---

The A/C in Pam’s apartment is broken one Wednesday afternoon when she gets back from trying to find a computer lab on campus that’s open and has the Adobe software she needs for this Flash assignment. She’s already annoyed, and the subway was delayed because of some track fire and this is the last thing she wants to be dealing with.

Naomi tells her the soonest they can get a new unit is tomorrow, which seems almost insane for someone at PC Richards to suggest to a customer who’s in a third floor walk up in the middle of August. Lisa’s already gone to stay with her boyfriend and Naomi was planning on visiting her sister, and now seems like a good a time as any.

Pam calls Lily, who tells her to come over, but, to make sure to pick up popcorn so they can watch _Project Runway_ appropriately. They’ll have a girly sleepover like they’re little kids, and she can try to convince Barney they made out after a pillow fight just to watch his eyes get all huge and interested.

And that night, somehow, a conversation in which they attempt to attach –licious to every word possible like Blayne (“This chardonnay is wine-licious” is probably where it should have started and ended) turns into Lily revealing that her and Marshall almost didn’t get married.

Listening to her talk about the years of dating, and the broken engagement and the shot at finding herself that didn’t quite work out, Pam wonders about how her life might have turned out if Jim had never come back to town. If she'd never done the coal walk, or told Roy about the kiss or written Jim that note. She calls him from the bathroom and tells him she loves him and she’s so grateful that they both stopped being stupid and let themselves be happy.

\---

Pam wants to take Jim to the MOMA where she says she’s been with Lily at least three times, but still hasn’t gotten tired of. At the start, she holds his hand and walks him through the exhibits, talking about movements and artists and inspirations. But a few floors in, he just stands back and watches her. She looks at the artwork, and it’s like she’s picking out all these things he wouldn't have even noticed if she wasn't there.

They sit for a long time in front of the wall-size display of Monet’s “Water Lilies” and when he asks her what she’s thinking about, she says, “I just can’t get over that everything in here started out as an idea and a blank canvas. It makes me believe in things. Is that silly?” 

"No. No, it's not," and it isn't because that's how she makes him feel. Like it's safe for him to believe in something. He kisses her, so hard, and hopes that they’re freaking out the Japanese tourists.

That night, while they’re lying in bed, he whispers, “You really love it here, don’t you?” 

She turns to him with this gigantic smile, looking like someone who’s finally gotten everything she’s wanted. “I really do.”

Jim knows that Barney has at least six different pranks he needs a partner for when he gets out of the rehab center, and Marshall and Ted both want to get into his fantasy football league and Lily makes these unbelievable omelets for dinner most Friday nights. He sees the way Pam is here, happy and driven with faded paint all over her hands. It's obvious what has to happen. He leaves a message for David Wallace, on his drive back to Scranton, asking to have his name officially put into consideration for Ryan’s old position.

\---

Before Pam knows it, she’s starting work on her final projects and Lily’s inviting her to come help set up her classroom for the next school year and commercials for Labor Day sales are popping up all over the TV. Robin’s been talking about a job opportunity in Tokyo, and Pam doesn’t know how she could bear to leave New York. How Pam herself is going to have to bear it somehow.

One morning, when Pam comes out of her bedroom, Lisa tells her she’s happy Pam responded to the ad. How maybe she might want to stay on after August just so she and Naomi don’t have to deal with interviewing a bunch of girls who will end up having skeezy boyfriends or different cultural ideas about hygiene and it almost makes Pam cry.

She doesn’t want to go back to answering phones and coddling Michael and having no one around to talk to but her boyfriend.

And just when she’s finally built up the courage to ask Jim if he’d mind doing the long distance thing for a little longer, he tells her to make reservations somewhere for Tuesday night because he has a job interview in the city.

The girls take her to buy some extremely overpriced lingerie and Pam can’t stop grinning. Lily asks if she thinks Jim’s going to propose, holding up this black lace bustier for Robin, and for the first time, Pam doesn’t feel like it would be too soon and wishes he will.

\---

The night before his interview, Pam comes to bed wearing only a white, silk robe. She’s wearing the smile usually reserved for pranks and kisses him like the most confident version of herself.

“David Wallace loves you, and I love you and you’re going to get this job because we’re going to sleep next to one another, just like this, for a very long time.”

It was a convincing encouragement speech, and he keeps playing it over and over again in his mind, even though getting half hard in the lobby before meeting with your potential supervisor seems a little stupid. In an attempt to curb his ridiculous behavior, Jim starts flipping through a severely out of date issue of _Newsweek_. 

Before he’s even gotten past the letters to the editor, he hears, “If this isn’t déjà vu, I don’t know what is.”

Looking up, he can see Karen Fillipelli.

\---

He’ll admit that the interview gets off to a rocky start. He’s still trying to make sense of what Karen is doing here for the same job, even though it’s completely logical, and he doesn’t have a really great answer for why he pulled his name out of the running for the same position a year ago.

But, he has good sales numbers, and Wallace still must really like him, because he says Jim should be available tomorrow with a grin on his face and a firm handshake.

He wants to walk right past Karen on his way out, not even acknowledge that she’s still sitting there, but, he goes over and wishes her good luck. 

She looks as shocked as he is that it happened.

\---

Pam jaw almost drops when Jim shows up to dinner saying that Karen was there. She doesn’t eat a lot of her entrée and back at her apartment she makes a phone call to Lily in the bedroom that lasts almost twenty minutes.

When she’s done, she curls up next to him on the sofa and apologizes, but won’t say for what.

\---

Jim gets the call when Pam’s in the shower from Wallace’s secretary, asking him to please come in again this afternoon. He goes into the bathroom to tell her, and all of the quietness from last night is gone. She kisses him, soaking his pajamas, and can’t stop saying, “I knew you could do it.”

He heads into corporate completely confident, and in a suit from the store Barney had told Pam could put together a look very last minute.

And this time, he’s the one walking in on Karen reading a magazine.

\---

“We’ve decided that as a way to better ensure we don’t have any further legal mishaps for the company, we would be hiring both of you to take on Ryan Howard’s old position.” David Wallace tells them when they are invited back to his office.

“I’m sorry, what?” Karen says, and Jim has to agree that he’s right there with her in her confusion.

“You will be responsible for acting as a checks and balance for one another’s work, and we feel that having two people on the job will allow for more creativity and less overload from trying to manage all of the branches. The company would like to minimize the likelihood of burnout from performing your duties in an effort to keep you both in the position.”

Jim looks at Karen, and feels kind of sick. “So, David, what you’re saying is that the position is being offered to us only as a joint venture?”

“Yes. You were the only two candidates from within the company to seek out this position a second time, and we feel you’re both the most ideal for what we’re looking for. Now, I understand that accepting this position might take a little bit of consideration on your end. I’ll give you a few minutes to discuss the possibility with one another.” David gets up from his chair and casually goes to walk out the door like he hasn’t just dropped a gigantic bombshell on the two of them.

“Oh, and I personally am hoping that your previous relationship will not in any way affect your ability to do your job, but, if you think it might, I would rather it be brought to my attention before you accept the assignment.” Then he’s gone, and Karen is staring at Jim like she might throw up or tear her hair out if she wasn’t too shocked to do either.

“Um…wow, that’s Dunder Mifflin for you,” he says. “Always as awkward as it possibly can be.”

“I really want this job, Jim. I’ve got to get out of Utica.” Karen has a look on her face that reads Jim Halpert, if you fuck up my life again, I will hunt you down and no one will find your remains.

“Well, I really want this job too.”

“Do you, Jim? Or is this going to just be something else you slack at?”

“I deserve that.”

“Yes, you do. But, I’ll ask you again, is this going to be something else that you just coast through on, because there’s only so much of that I can take, and my limit was probably officially reached by dating you.”

He think about Pam, and how much she loves New York and how he wants to finally be able to ask her to marry him some day. “I will do this job the way it needs to be done, Karen.”

“Good.”

David comes back, and they accept, shaking his hand, and then they’re being shown their office with it’s two empty desks and Jim feels the same rush of panic he got when he walked in this afternoon.

\---

"He told you over the phone that he's going to be working with Karen again? Over the phone?!" Lily asks, and is already signaling Wendy the waitress when she sees Pam is not going to need much longer with that glass of wine.

"Who's Karen?" Ted asks on his way back from the bathroom.

"Karen," Lily spits out, "is Jim's ex-girlfriend."

"So? Pam's his girlfriend now and he loves her. Nothing else matters." Ted is such a romantic that she wants to instantly believe him. And she doesn't want to get into the whole thing, about Jim coming back from Stamford with her, or watching them be together for all those months, or the way that she still feels kind of horrible sometimes about how Jim ended things. The sick feeling she got in her stomach when he called her from some rest stop between Scranton and Utica, saying he was going to see her. 

She puts on her brave Pam expression, where she smiles with her mouth closed when she wants to cry, and says, "Ted's right."

"Pam..." Lily says, putting her hand on her shoulder.

"No, it's ok, Lil. He's right," and Pam really hopes he is.

\---

The next few days are a whirlwind of activity, with Jim preparing to relocate, and Pam trying to register late for the fall semester, and both of them taking lots of tearful calls from Michael. They generally are about how they can't be the godparents to his possible love child if they're thousands of miles away or that even getting Ryan back won't make up for this hole in his office family or how he's going to throw up if they don't promise it's all some prank against Dwight.

Pam tells herself she's tired and stressed, and that's why she finds herself crying in the bathroom during one of her last lectures. Sitting on the pulled down toilet lid inside the stall, she feels like she's right back at Dunder Mifflin.

She doesn't want to be mad at Jim, and she doesn't want to feel threatened by Karen. She just needs everything to be good again, like it was just a few weeks ago.

Pam looks at her naked ring finger, remembering that morning after Toby's party when she'd told him she couldn't stand knowing it could happen at any second. It feels worse now, knowing it won't be.

According to her watch, she's been in here for a long time already, so she wipes her face with toilet paper and goes back to class. She's happy this is the one Lily isn't in, because Pam knows she wouldn't believe it this time when she said she was fine.

\---

The first night Barney's out of the rehab center, free of all his casts, rocking a suit and only using the cane because Robin helped him come up with an awesome back story about how he needs it after rescuing a schoolboy from a tiger in India, they celebrate with rounds at McLaren's. He wants Ted to get drunk, as part of the welcome back to civilization festivities, but Ted tells him he has to help Jim and Pam move in the morning, and there's no way he's doing that hungover.

"Pam, I can't believe you didn't ask me to help you move!"

Ted says, "You hate helping people move."

"I helped you move into Robin's."

"Yeah, by stealing all of his stuff," Robin says.

"It helped!"

Lily takes a sip of her beer. “There’s no way it can be healthy for you to sit in a car for that long. You’ll get blood clots.”

"Why do you even want to go, Barney?" Marshall asks.

"I want to play the Powerball."

And while they're fighting back and forth about how there's no room in the car, and that anyone can just buy him a ticket, hell, they can all buy him a ticket, Pam's surprisingly able to relax. Listening to it, the personal references, and catchphrases and everything, Pam realizes she's a part of this. A part of this group, because she's following it all even though most of it happened before she even knew them. She doesn't have to worry about how if she doesn't have Jim, she doesn't have anything.

"Barney can come if the doctor says it's ok," she blurts out, interrupting whatever Ted was saying about how the odds don't change regardless of how many tickets you buy.

He gives her a grin. "I call Commissioner in charge of yelling at other people for not using their knees. And I'm not carrying anything."

Marshall wants to know why Barney always gets to be a Commissioner whenever there's a project, and how it's not fair because Commissioner is definitely the coolest of all titles. Pam helps Robin list off other options like Corporal or Vice Admiral until Lily tells them to stop indulging him and he has to grow up just like that brat Jason in her class who always wants to get his way.

\---

Jim could tell Pam wasn't pleased with the situation the last time he saw her, not to say that he is. He pictured himself getting the job and proposing to Pam on the Brooklyn Bridge and leaving everything from his life in Scranton behind except for her. 

He's a little worried she's doing the thing she used to do, faking like everything is ok, and not making waves, and just letting whatever's bothering her be ok, because she needs it to be. But, when she shows up with everyone and the UHaul, she's calm and it helps him to be calm too.

They start on the first trip of many, Barney dictating the whole time about something they could be doing differently. He won't even help Lily label boxes, claiming his hand hurts because it's too cold out here in the wilderness of Pennsylvania for his recently shattered bones. And slowly, even without Barney's help, the contents of his apartment empty out, getting ready to go into a storage unit in New York until they can find a place to live.

Ted and Marshall and him sit on the front steps, sharing a Fierce Grape container of Gatorade, sweat drying, while the girls are upstairs trying to keep Barney out of their hair. "Thanks for helping with all this. There's no way Pam and I could have done this by ourselves." To be fair, Dwight had offered to help, anything to get Jim out of Scranton, and Andy had made it a point to comment on his ability to lift a ridiculous amount of weight over his head, you know, if Big Tuna was interested, but it's better this way. Without either of them.

"No problem. You're almost a bro," Ted says.

Marshall adds, "Yeah, Barney could not stop talking about how he's going to swear you in while we were driving."

"You should probably be cautious about that," Ted adds as a warning, passing Jim the bottle.

He wants to ask them if Pam's been alright these past few days because they're almost bros and they've been drinking out of the same drink for the past 10 minutes, but then Lily is yelling out the window for them to get back to work if they're ever going to make it home before _Saturday Night Live_ , and he doesn't.

\---

All of the big stuff has made it out, and everyone is in the kitchen eating Pizza by Alfredo off paper plates while wrapping the last of the cups and silverware up in newspaper. He could have sworn Pam was standing behind the island, but when he looks up, she's not. In fact, she's not anywhere in the room. He slips out while Robin starts cleaning up the remains of their dinner.

She's in the bedroom with the door closed, and he's almost terrified that she's going to be crying, or gearing up to tell him this isn't going to work or one of the other six horrible scenarios that run through his head in the amount of time it takes him to turn the knob. But, she's just sitting on the metal folding chair that's still left in there and staring at her hands. 

"I found this." She holds up the ring box, and he can see that the windbreaker was the thing right on top of the stack he'd left on the chair. He can't tell if she's excited or disappointed or anything. She's just rolling the box around and not meeting his eyes. "Ask me," comes out in a whisper.

"What?"

"Ask me," she repeats, with a little more confidence.

And she's smiling while he kneels in front of her, and says, "Pamela Beesly, I would love to ask you to spend the rest of your life with me."

They've just started kissing, her hands on his face, and the ring on her hand, when Robin is yelling "What are you guys doing in there. We already took the mattress" and Barney is trying to out shout her with "Suitcase Up!” and Pam is laughing. Just laughing, and he can feel it everywhere.

\---

Pam leads him out the bedroom, holding his hand, and before they've even made it into the living room, Lily is shrieking, "Oh my God, he asked you?!" and when she moves to extend her arm, sparkles of light dance around the empty walls of the apartment. Everyone's hugging, even Barney, who tries to cover it up by saying, "Another one bites the dust."

"We need champagne!" Ted announces, and Marshall's already grabbing his car keys and heading to the liquor store that's down the street.

Pam looks up at him, while Robin and Lily fawn over her, and mouths _Thank you._

\---

Jim somehow makes it to work before Karen on Monday, even with the two rounds of morning sex. Marshall told him that's totally normal for engaged girls, and he should probably just enjoy it for as long as it lasts.

He's getting his desk set up, arranging his (Dwight's) pencil cup and deciding where to put Pam's picture when Karen does walk in and says, "Christ, you guys got engaged this weekend, didn't you?"

He feels guilty, hearing her say it. "Yeah. Is it that obvious?"

"You were like a second away from holding that picture frame up to your heart." She drops her own box of belongings down on her side of the room. "Well, congratulations, Halpert."

"Thanks."

And after that it's quiet, each of them moving things around and looking over Ryan's files. 

At lunch, Jim sees a bag of those Herr's chips at the place he picks up a sandwich, and almost buys them for her, but doesn't at the last minute. He thinks if all it makes him remember is that afternoon of joking around, she's probably going to feel the same way, and it seems a little more cruel than thoughtful when he looks at it that way.

\---

Pam was only able to get herself into Sketching the Human Form at the last minute when she tried to register, and she wishes Lily wasn't back teaching kindergarten, because she really feels like giggling with someone over the Taz tattoo their model has on his upper thigh. She's trying to get the arms right, when her phone starts vibrating in her bag, and his shoulders looks like crap anyway, so she takes a break and goes into the hall.

It's a text from Jim and it says, _Ok, I can't take sitting here in silence with her any more. Can I ask her to drinks?_

Pam wants to say no, but remembers being new in the city, and can't. _McLaren's at 7_ she texts back.

\---

"I'll be a bitch to her if you want me to be," Lily says. "Robin totally will be too. She's amazing at it. I'll just tell her to treat Karen exactly like she treated Victoria when Ted was dating her."

"Pam, I can be even worse to this girl than I was to Victoria."

"Be nice." Pam sips her chardonnay. "I invited her."

And Jim shows up with Karen and Ted and Marshall come down after the batteries die on the Wii controllers, and they just all sit around talking. Karen tells the story about the Christmas party and Ted brings up Margarita Monday at his office. Which leads to Lily chiming in about the time she drank an entire batch of margaritas junior year and threw up all over the side of someone's car, which apparently Karen had done as well, except it was senior year and boxed wine. After a few rounds, and at least fives stories from everyone about them doing something stupid while they were drunk, they're outside trying to catch cabs home. Jim makes Karen take the first one they hail, and while climbing in she says, "Thanks a lot for tonight. Maybe another time?"

Pam answers yes before Jim even has a chance to say anything.

\---

Jim starts coming home from work happier, and that would be enough to make the hanging with Karen worthwhile. But, Pam actually finds herself enjoying Karen in the way she always thought she could have in Scranton if Jim just for some reason wasn't there. She starts coming to the bar more often with Jim after they're done for the day, and then she's over at Lily's on Saturday for a marathon of _Law and Order: SVU_ and Barney and Robin want her to go play laser tag whenever they're going.

Karen fits in, just like they all did before her, and their group gets a little bigger.

\---

Jim and Karen have been putting off visiting Michael and the Scranton branch for as long as they possibly can, which when it comes to those two things, is not very long at all. Before they've even been at their positions a month, David Wallace tells them they should probably check in and make sure that Michael isn't using the office as a storefront for his sales on eBay.

And of course it turns out that is exactly what Michael is doing, the conference room covered in old exercise equipment and ceramic figurines he says are his mom's and lots of joke shop items that Jim doesn't even think a second grader would buy.

Pam had sent Phyllis an e-mail when they got engaged, and Kelly comes up to him and asks if maybe Pam would let her be a bridesmaid, because Angela already said she totally can't be, even though Andy seemed cool with it, but Kelly totally gets it because she's sure she'd look prettier than Angela, like that would be hard, and duh, Angela doesn't want to be the second best at her own wedding, Jim. But, he should totally ask Pam, because now that she got that haircut, she's totally cute, and shouldn't worry about Kelly upstaging her.

He tells himself this is all amazing stuff to tell Pam when he gets into he city, and keeps pushing through. Finally, after explaining to Michael, that no, he's not back with Karen, and no, he has no idea what body wash Holly uses, he slips a jello mold with a duplicate of Dwight's car keys into the bottom drawer while Dwight's in the bathroom, and gets the hell out of there.

Driving back, he and Karen exchange money back and forth for all their various bets of what exactly they'd deal with, and she comes out behind as always. "How could you think Meredith wouldn't have her sunglasses on?" he want to know. "It was Wednesday morning and Poor Richard's had Lady's Night on Tuesdays. Come on, Karen, it's getting embarrassing." 

He ends up $23 richer, even after paying the tolls.

\---

Pam finds them a really nice apartment in Robin's neighborhood, and with Ted's help, she gets a job at his firm that will help them actually be able to afford it. Stella and her go wedding dress shopping on the weekends, and it starts to get cool and before she knows it leaves are falling in Central Park.

She's trying to have Jim help her come up with awesome costumes that will maybe give them a chance at dethroning Lily and Marshall's title at McLaren's on Halloween, and Ted's already making them promise to stay in town for Thanksgiving which isn't that hard because she and Karen want to go and watch the parade. Robin is also telling her that there's nothing like when it finally starts snowing in the city. It's better than snow anywhere else.

The summer's definitely over, but Pam feels like so much more is only just getting started.


End file.
